


Continuity

by Amedia



Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Creepy, Dark, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:41:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amedia/pseuds/Amedia
Summary: Glitch and Cain explore the Witch's tower.





	Continuity

**Author's Note:**

> Response to a four-word prompt from the magic4mula LJ community: "Key ... Ball ... Silver ... Bubble"
> 
> Originally posted on LJ on May 6, 2008.

"I've never been here before," Glitch said as they entered the seventh room of the morning. He and Cain had volunteered to go through the upper floors of the Central City tower complex, looking for stragglers, be they surviving prisoners or Witch-loyal holdouts. So far they had found no one.

Occasionally Glitch had seemed to recognize a place, such as a curious dogleg in a hallway or the configuration of a stairwell. As soon as he stepped into this room, however, his face had gone blank.

Cain looked around. The room appeared to be an experimental laboratory. A tray on a wheeled table held a wicked array of gleaming silver implements; next to it was a long platform with an assortment of straps. A framed poster displaying a diagram of the central nervous system hung high on one wall above a blackboard covered with illegible scribbling. To one side, a slow bubble squirmed its way through a tank of miasmic amber liquid; a glass case of unidentifiable specimens stood on the other, a tiny bronze key in the lock. A giant ball of spidersilk lay on a shelf nearby; Cain could only imagine the creatures that could have produced it.

Cain followed Glitch's eye to the head of the platform, and noticed immediately what Glitch was staring at: a strap just a few inches from the end, where it would cross the forehead of anyone who lay there.

Glitch shook himself, walked to the middle of the room and looked around, an expression of dawning recognition and horror on his face. "I wondered why I always felt sorry for invertebrates," he said abruptly, staring at the specimen case. His eye fell next on the ball. "And why I was afraid of spiders." He pointed to the blackboard. "And why I remembered Zixter's second theorem when I didn't even know my own name." He circled in place, taking it all in, shuddering briefly at the sight of the tank, turning dead white when his eyes fell on the tray and its contents.

Cain took his arm, concerned. "You all right, there?"

Glitch looked as if his eyes were focused somewhere long ago. Then he shook himself again and looked directly at Cain. "I have always been here," he whispered. "I never really left."


End file.
